International "The Cardinal" Gets German Blu-ray Release (1 Viewer)

Yet another major Roadshow Production gets a Blu-ray release outside of the USA.
What is going on?

I've always liked "THE CARDINAL" even with it's wooden leading man. (Thankfully Romy Schneider more than compensates)

The film has undergone some new restoration work for this release and if the scans are anything to go by then it looks somewhat better than the existing Warner DVD.
The Warner DVD was a 2 disc set with some good extras, which I think maybe missing on this new Blu-ray.

The disc does have removable subtitles, but unfortunately for some, this new German release is region B locked.

I love the Jerome Moross score, even if it does sound at times like the Cardinal visits The Big Country.



Doug.

Doug, an interesting aside to the "wooden leading man" story is how he was tortured and harassed by Preminger during the filming so much that he gave up acting afterwards and pursued a career in writing, which he found great success with. I liked Tryon in this role (and also in THE STORY OF RUTH) but the pressure he was under didn't do much to inspire him evidently. By the way, where do we go to see the scans? I really liked THE CARDINAL and will probably pick it up.

Blu-ray.com's review: http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Cardinal-Blu-ray/73926/#Review

Damn, Byron, been looking for this in all the wrong places! Thank you so very much. Order going out to Amazon Germany right now. Sure looks good to me.

The WB-owned Otto Preminger films a kind of an interesting case. While WB hold distribution rights in North America, the prints themselves are held by an outside 3rd party company and that's who seem to get the transfers done. Might explain why so few of them are released outside of the Warner Archive.

This, Advise and Consent, and The Man with the Golden Arm might get blu-ray releases in the future in NA, but I wouldn't count on the others.

When will we ever see a US or UK Blu release of Ms Schneider's "Sissi" trilogy, I wonder?...

My issue with the music in THE CARDINAL (which I find to be the most diverse motion picture score, ever written), is that more score would have helped the film. For a film that runs as long as THE CARDINAL, these isn't that much music. What's there is sublime. I love the film, and have since I first saw it during its original release. For a brief period in my life, I served as a personal assistant to Tom Tryon, and was very saddened by his death from cancer in 1991. By the way, although he detested Preminger, he did not quit acting as a result of his experience with THE CARDINAL and, in fact, made another film with Preminger a couple of year's later. He stopped acting, because he finally embraced his talent as a writer, which he always wanted to do.

Great film. One of my favorites..

Doug Bull said:

Yet another major Roadshow Production gets a Blu-ray release outside of the USA.
What is going on?
...
Doug.

Click to expand...

I asked myself the same question, only the other way around.

In the early years of DVD, so many german titles were released outside of Germany.
An with Blu-ray it happened again!

So, I feel for you.

I am hoping that this release will lead on to the release of In Harm's Way.

JoHud said:

The WB-owned Otto Preminger films a kind of an interesting case. While WB hold distribution rights in North America, the prints themselves are held by an outside 3rd party company and that's who seem to get the transfers done. Might explain why so few of them are released outside of the Warner Archive.

This, Advise and Consent, and The Man with the Golden Arm might get blu-ray releases in the future in NA, but I wouldn't count on the others.

Click to expand...

THE CARDINAL is a fascinating film and one which wouldn't be made today - any film about the Church now would automatically be a hatchet job!

I have the German Blu-ray. The picture quality is not perfect - the print has scratches, the contrast seems high and grain (or noise?) is excessive but it has good detail and the colour is much better than the Warner Bros DVD. The opening says the print comes from the BFI's National Film Archive and I like seeing the original BBFC certificate at the beginning. It also has the Overture which the DVD didn't have.

It seems that the films made by Preminger's production company are now owned by Ignite Films of The Netherlands and are licensed (outside North America) by Hollywood Classics. The other Preminger titles owned by Ignite Films are ADVISE AND CONSENT, THE HUMAN FACTOR, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, THE MOON IS BLUE and SAINT JOAN, all of it which have HD masters. http://hollywoodclassics.com/Search/?sid=f39f99f09b9db7f47cacd3d8e66b6703

Would love to see a US reissue of The Cardinal. Saw it many times at the theater upon first release. I have the last DVD which was a huge improvement over the first botched DVD reissue. But seeing it in HD would be nice.

JoHud said:

The WB-owned Otto Preminger films a kind of an interesting case. While WB hold distribution rights in North America, the prints themselves are held by an outside 3rd party company and that's who seem to get the transfers done. Might explain why so few of them are released outside of the Warner Archive.

This, Advise and Consent, and The Man with the Golden Arm might get blu-ray releases in the future in NA, but I wouldn't count on the others.

Click to expand...

The Man With the Golden Arm has been released in Germany, unfortunately it's 1:37 AR.

You can see the shadow of a boom mike above the telephone on this DVD Beaver cap.

revgen said:

The Man With the Golden Arm has been released in Germany, unfortunately it's 1:37 AR.

You can see the shadow of a boom mike above the telephone on this DVD Beaver cap.

Click to expand...

The problem with "The Man With the Golden Arm" of course, is that it somehow ended up as public domain title and anyone can release poor quality versions, instead of paying money to the rights owners for a high quality master.

There was discussion about The Man with the Golden Arm, and why it may be best at 1.37:1, here:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/topic/313215-aspect-ratio-documentation/page-118#entry3953125

Thanks Nick. I wasn't aware of how awful the production on the film was.

Extensive info about the German resto (by TLEFilms) of The Man With the Golden Arm:
[color=rgb(68,68,68);font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;]http://www.tlefilms.com/TLEFilms__FS_nav2.htm[/color]
Text includes link to another page comparing the framing of the WB master and the TLEFilms resto (exposing the whole frame) done for Ignite Films.

At bottom of page you can find clickable links to extensive info about restos of The Cardinal and other films, by Preminger, Leone, Lang.
The info about Advise and Consent is especially interesting. Has to do with splices negatively affecting the tight original framing negatively.

For more info about the framing of The Man With the Golden Arm, go here and see posts by Torsten Kaiser of TLEFilms:
[color=rgb(68,68,68);font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;]http://www.hometheaterforum.com/topic/313215-aspect-ratio-documentation/page-118[/color]

Just ordered the bluray of THE CARDINAL Spanish import from DaaVeeDee. It is region ABC and costs around 30.00

Trajan, please let us know if is a pressed disc or a BD-R. Thanks.